These novellas require readerly effort and patience. In what at first seems like a bit of a patchwork they tell a sort of blinding truth, in the tradition of Hasidic folk tales. God is not only a presence, but a character. In a mirror of the human mind, an assortment of worlds - places, times, emotional and mental states - somehow coexist. There are important yet homely recognizable details plucked from bourgeois prewar European life, but no quaintness in the descriptions of the characters' histories in Europe (mainly Germany, Hungary, Austria, Rumania) and then Palestine and Israel. For example, the protagonist segues quite reasonably from a consideration of an ice cream cone to the burden of his father's mental illness - in several paragraphs. Love among people (parents and children; men and women) is often a troublesome thing. "Women, Joseph thinks, yearn to embrace a man, and a man yearns to embrace his Creator [...]"

Patience is required, and rewarded. The presence of the several languages (German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic and the English of the translation) is the tip of the iceberg, really, in these stories that attempt so much. Definitely worth reading.

This book contains two novellas - each excellent and unlike each other.

The Book of Joseph is written in a mix of poetry and prose. It follows, to varying degrees of detail, the lives of several individuals who lead intersecting lives. Don't consider this "just another Holocaust novel" - it is a significant and unique addition to the corpus of Jewish Holocaust literature.

Katschen is a very low key novella following the life of an orphan in Palestine - describing life through the very imaginative child's point of view. Katschen's view is a delightful mix of naivete, taking words literally, and a vivid visual imagination. His life is followed through care by an aunt, by an elderly uncle, thru a kibbutz, a friendly Arab, the police and finally by his father - a man confined to an insane asylum through most of the story.

Both tales include footnotes that translate the bits of German, Yiddish, Hebrew and Arabic that occasionally occur. This multilingual facet is the only trace of a scholarly background on the part of the author.

Yoel Hoffman is an author with absolutely stunning control over his story - an unerring sense of concrete detail in sparse prose. I have yet to find any of his work less than awe inspiring.

With each book of Yoel Hoffmann's that I read, I become more and more impressed with his work. He builds his story out of small vignettes - real, imagined, and ruminations on either. These building blocks are often crafted out of the very ordinary - a cup of tea, a widow's birthday dance, a visit to a hospitalized friend, a fruit seller, shoe laces in Bernard's shooes - yet out of these very ordinary observations, a life story is built.

In this particular story, precision is emphasized. For example, parenthetical phrases are given to clarify sentences that are not unclear; these device builds an understanding of the inner thoughts of Bernard without describing and without using an omniscient narrator ... this is only one example of the incredible craft used to build the narrative.

This books succeeds in portraying a recently widowed Jew in Palestine coming to grips with the death of his wife and the horrors of WWII - portraying the crisis in understanding of fact, causality, spiritual understanding etc.

As this is the third incredibly excellent book I have read by Yoel Hoffman, I am astounded that he is not better known. Add this to any must read list.

Thru the first fifth or so of these book, I thought I may have finally found a book by Yoel Hoffmann that I didn't love. Because of that, I would strongly urge anyone who has read nothing of Hoffmann's to begin with "Katschen & The Book of Joseph" rather than this book.

In the small units (chapters? prose poems? fragments?) that make up this book, Hoffman builds an understanding (an impression? an empathy?) for the experience of falling in love. This woman loves man loves woman loves child loves mother ... story builds within the individual characters, within the world, within the religious universe in unusual connections: "Now his life, too, seems like a story, except that here there occur the same eruptions that take place on the surface of the sun, and he hears the sound of this burning, like the song which is of this world alone: 'Frere Jacques.'"

While occasionally a line or image seems contrived in a way not evident in his other works, the results are astonishing. At the novel's end the reader has seen barriers and loneliness fall away and love flow in to replace them. This love is physical, sacred and profane as is the world within which the characters live limited (or not?) by time, space, contradition and naming.

Though translated flawlessly, the presentation of this text poses something of a problem, being approximately one half of the original Japanese text - written by a critic of the Zen tradition (a Zen Buddhist, using the pseudonym Ha Ho U-O). The 'Koan collection' comprising the bulk of Hoffmann's translation had been presented by the Japanese author - to expose the rigidity of the system concerned. The main body of the text (not presented by Hoffmann) comprises a lengthy critique and analysis of the contemporary Rinzai schools. This book appeared in the fifth year of the Taisho era (1916), presenting something of an embarrass- ment, attacking the whole system of 'koan training' then in use - in the transmission lines stemming from Inzan Ien (1751-1814) and Takuju Kosen (1760-1833). Thus, there is a certain irony in the fact that Hoffmann presented these koan (and their answers) as if handing over the keys to the 'inner sanctum' as it were, when the Japanese author had effectively 'leaked' them out - to show that the system had fallen into a repetitive, lifeless pattern. As Hoffmann acknowledges, these koan - were once sold to 'unsui' or trainess 'under the counter' in certain bookshops - as a kind of 'crib' to help them through dokusan or san-zen. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Rinzai schools do stick that rigidly to such a formula. It may well be that the Japanese author of the book encountered a certain dogmatism, with a teacher of his own - justly complaining about it (after all, the Japanese text confirms that these documents were used for 'transmission in the secret room') and the author's comments were not founded on baseless rumour. Still, I suspect that most Roshis worth their salt would eschew the use of such a rigid systematisation of the koan.The point is - Hoffmann presented these 'koan' - and their 'answers' - as if they were the 'keys to the temple' - and the Japanese author had said the very converse. In a word, what Hoffmann presents as 'evening dinner' - is what the Japanese author had wanted taken 'off the menu' - and it is not hard to see why. Unlike texts such as the Zenrinkushu, which contain unadulterated extracts from scores of Zen dialogues, the texts presented here have an almost farcical arbitrariness about them - Zen burlesque.

Of course, Zen koans don't have answers: that's the point. This book wasn't meant to provide 'instant enlightenment' by giving readers the 'right' answers; it's more like a history book, giving the koans and the answers that the old zen masters supposedly expected from pupils when they were given one. In the final analysis, it's an interesting insight into the zen mind, with about as much relation to actual zen enlightenment as a biography of Louis Armstrong has to actually playing jazz.

This book is a collection of Death poems from throughout Japanese history. There is a long standing tradition of writing a farewell to the world shortly before your demise. Most of these are written by Zen monks or Haiku poets, and most convey a peaceful, resigned, almost restful view of death. If you're feeling mortal, worried that you might not live forever, it may give you a little peace of mind. This view of Death is very different from the traditional Western one, and provides an interesting window on Japanese culture. The only thing I didn't like about the book was its tendency to lapse into pedantic historical explanations between poems.